NVIDIA Posts Initial Signed PMU Firmware Support Patches - Currently For GM20B

NVIDIA developer Alexandre Courbot has sent out his latest version of Nouveau DRM patches to carry out Secure Boot refactoring of the code for dealing with NVIDIA's signed firmware requirements for Maxwell GPUs and newer. But these latest patches come with a bit of a twist.

On top of the refactoring of the Secure Boot code, the patches published Monday morning also provide initial signed PMU firmware support. Of course, initially, this is limited to the GM20B / Tegra X1 SoC. But Courbot explained in the public mailing list post, "This revision includes initial signed PMU firmware support for GM20B (Tegra X1). This PMU code will also be used as a basis for dGPU signed PMU firmware support. With the PMU code, the refactoring of secure boot should also make more sense."

Great to see NVIDIA appears to be working towards signed PMU firmware support for their discrete GPUs. The signed PMU firmware support is necessary as one piece of the puzzle for being able to properly support re-clocking with the GeForce GTX 900 series and newer. The signed firmware released by NVIDIA earlier this year did not cover the PMU.

The GM20B PMU firmware has been published to this Git repository. More details via this patch series.

We're still waiting on the GTX 1050/1060/1070/1080 Pascal firmware to be released too -- any of it -- and hopefully that PMU support will come at the same time as the rest, but we'll have to wait and see.